


and then she is the darkness

by simplysweetperfection (tinydemons)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:04:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinydemons/pseuds/simplysweetperfection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five ways Clarke Griffin comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and then she is the darkness

 

 

 **.001**  
Lexa is backed against the railing, moonlight kissing the curve of her bare shoulders, fingers shaking in the absence of a blade. Clarke is staring at her, eyes wide with a thousand questions and a million answers. Lexa wants to look away, afraid she might find the solution to the universe in Clarke's gaze, maybe something even worse, but she can't, she won't, she _can't_.

"How," Lexa stops. She curls her fingers around the sharp edge of concrete and tries to steady herself and her trembling heart.

Clarke hears the question. She takes a step towards Lexa, hand outstretched as if she wants to follow the slope of Lexa's collarbones with the tips of her fingers. "I paid off your guards," she says. She's so close Lexa can feel the warmth of Clarke's breath against her cheek and the ghost of Clarke's touch on her skin. "They were very accommodating."

"Treason," Lexa says, simply. She looks off into the void of darkness in her bedroom, looking for the men who sold their fidelity for coin and the poisoned words of Clarke Griffin.

"You grounders seem big on that."

Lexa's steeled spine melts, burning under the weight of Clarke's gaze. "I'm sorry," she nearly whispers. Sorry for what? The mountain or the kiss? The village or the warriors? The holy war between sky and ground or the frozen years between them that shatter to millions of pieces when they blink? Which was she sorry about? There was too much.

Clarke finally touches Lexa; thumb trailing up her neck, toes against the arch of her foot, hip against Lexa's stomach. She doesn't say anything, knowing her skin will scorch Lexa more than anything her tongue could weave.

"Did you think about me?" Clarke finally murmurs. Lexa watches as Clarke's eyes drop down to her hand and then back up again. If she looks hard enough, Lexa can see the end between the whites of Clarke's eyes and the infinite vortex of her pupils.

Every day. Lexa has to bite her tongue.

"Yes."

"Did you think about them?"

Now that's the question, isn't it? How many ghosts are waiting in the darkness of Lexa's bedroom, allowing her this small reprieve under the moon with the girl she loves, with the girl who has stars in her hair. What will they be missing when she goes back in? Hair, fingers, teeth, skin? Will they greedily pull what was lost to them from Lexa when she finally joins them? Lexa knows she won't have to wait long now to find out.

"Yes," Lexa responds. I think of you more, she can't say.

Lexa swallows and lifts her hand to push Clarke's hair off her shoulder slowly, carefully, like she might wake a hungry lion. "Will you think of me?" she bravely asks.

That startles Clarke. Lexa can see her chin tremble and her eyes growing wet. _No, don't cry._ Lexa grips Clarke's shoulder. She can feel her heartbeat in her palm _. Remember. Back straight, chest out, your skin stone and tough as bark. Didn't I teach you as much?_

Clarke can't say anything, lip between her teeth and her fingers nipping at the hollow of Lexa's throat. Clarke nods. Lexa feels it then; relief and desperation and —

oh.

" _Wanheda_ ," Lexa says, breathes, eyes closed and mouth hungry for Clarke's name.

Clarke smiles, a tear sliding off the bridge of her nose. "Lexa," she says.

The knife between her ribs is more comforting than the sight of Clarke's tears, Lexa thinks, and lets the pull of the ground swallow her whole.

 

 

 

 **.002**  
"Clarke, come home," Bellamy says. There's an arrow head in his shoulder and a knife still in his thigh. He feels woozy, like he might fall and crack his skull open at any moment but that doesn't matter, not when Clarke is here, when Clarke is crying, when Clarke is turning away from him to face the woods, like something is trying to call her back into its warm embrace. "Clarke," he says again. He can't help the pleading that creeps into his voice.

She turns to look at him from the side, her body still faced away; always faced away. "I can't," she says.

"You can."

She shakes her head, the red of her hair caressing her jaw with the motion. He hates the color, the way it looks like she tried take all the blood soaking her hands and bleach her hair with it instead.

"Thank you for saving me, Bellamy. Really. But I can't go back."

 _Horseshit_. It sits on the tip of his tongue and dances between his teeth before he swallows it back down. He doesn't want to spook her, not after everything he's done to get her here in the first place. Not when the bounty hunters knife is still in his leg and his hands are still wet with the blood of all the people they've killed. "Your mom is worried," he says instead. It's a low blow, an awful jab he learned from her. "Everyone misses you."

Clarke looks guilty at that. Her gaze skitters past him, looking over his shoulder in the direction where the Ark lays smashed against the ground. Her jaw works in tension and Bellamy takes a hobbled step towards her. "Clarke, please. We need you."

I need you. Please, Clarke. I need. Please.

Bellamy feels like she's reaching into him and pulling his throat out through his nose, her stare is so heavy he feels his knees buckle. Do you like what you see? he can't ask. Is it enough to make you come home?

"Alright," Clarke finally says after minutes, months, years. Bellamy's chest balloons. If he doesn't think hard enough, he can convince himself it's relief. He can convince himself that this time, she'll stay.

 

 

 

 **.003**  
The scouts find the body under dried, dead leaves. The waxy sheen skin is pulled tight over bones until it's impossible to tell who it once was, now warped beyond recognition. Hungry animals and an unforgiving winter saw to that.

"Pou joka," one of them says, toeing the body into a ditch. The worms will have a feast soon enough.

 

 

 

 **.004**  
It's a finger first. Clean and pale and broken straight.

Panic fills her all the way from the ridges of her eyebrows to the tips of her toes and Lexa vomits until there is nothing and she is left heaving.

It doesn't make sense that they'd send it to her, not when the Skaikru are so loud and bright and unprotected. But who else could they send this too. No one but Lexa understands.

She snaps the neck of the Ice Nation messenger, chokes the Ice Nation ambassador, and stabs the Ice Nation guards. It's not enough, not that she ever thought it would be, but the absence of righteous fury is downright painful when she returns all their heads in a box.

A week later it's a hand, five little fingers still attached and dirt stuck under the fingernails. Lexa feels some half-broken thing inside of her crack and shatter, the debrief flying out and cutting across everything. There's a noise in her ears that makes her want to rip them off and it's like she can hear the echo of Costia's screams bouncing around in her skull. She can feel something old and familiar pooling in her gut; red and hot and heavy. What is it? What's inside of her? She wants to pull it and lay it out across the floor, poke and prod this angry red thing until she can understand just what is locked up tight in her chest. Why is it peeking between her ribs and tearing her apart? Why didn't it roll away with Costia's head all those years ago?

Why me she wants to scream. Why her.

Next is a foot, an eye, a tongue.

How many secrets has she spilled at this point? Did she tell the Ice Queen how Lexa's hands trembled when they kissed before the Queen ripped out her tongue? Did she say Lexa slept on her left side and kicked all her furs off in the night? Did she explain how hard Lexa's back was against her hands, so clean and whole with the ghosts of her people? Did she scream that she hardly knew Lexa, that it was too early for love and loss?

Three more, the finishing of the set.

Clarke, Lexa says, sobs, screams. Then she waits for another head.

 

 

 

 **.005**  
After fourteen months, three weeks, and six days: Clarke comes back.

(Abby doesn't recognize her, at first. The thought twists around her sternum uncomfortably: what kind of mother doesn't recognize her own child?)

Clarke is hard-muscled now, filling out her shirt in ways she never did before. Her hair, once so bright, is muted with dirt and soot now as it falls to her chin in waves. She has furs wrapped around her neck and grounder paint pulled across her eyes. There's a sword on her back, knife at her waist, a stiletto keeping her braids pinned to the back of her head but that's only just what Abby can see; somehow she doubts that's all of it. She's also missing the last two fingers of her left hand. The scar tissue pulls together clumsily, almost as if someone didn't know what they were doing or maybe as though Clarke had been left to do it herself with only one hand.

There isn't time time to ask however because Clarke is here, in her arms; chin tucked against Abby's shoulder, arm around her neck and pulling Abby down, her skin practically humming with restless energy.

"Mom," Clarke says, sounding like she's crying but there are no tears when Abby leans back to look at her. Abby knows she's crying herself, but doesn't care.

" _Clarke_."

Her mouth goes hard at that, like Clarke hasn't heard or used her name in months. It's probably true and most definitely breaks Abby's heart just a little bit more. Abby cups Clarke's cheeks, wipes dirt from the apples of red with her thumbs and tries swallow all the desperation she's spent the last year burying down deep and tight. Clarke's hands grab Abby's wrists. She doesn't know if she wants to pull Abby closer or push her away.

"What happened to you?" Abby asks, "Where have you been?"

Clarke takes a step back, leaving Abby's arms cold and empty. The black warpaint around her eyes highlights the frantic way Clarke looks between her mother and Arkadia off in the distance. Clarke is translucent in her agitation and discomfort. She is a ghost wearing the skin of Clarke Griffin but still suffering the crushing weight of it all at once. It frightens Abby just how different this Clarke is, how the miles and minutes have taken away the little girl Abby remembers; the one who sat in her lap when she was younger and slapped the pages of books Abby was reading with her tiny chubby hands; the one who spent hours staring out their window into empty space, laughing when Wells told her one day there would be something staring back; the one who screamed when Jake shot out the airlock and collapsed in Abby's arms.

Would she scream now? Abby doesn't think so.

"I — " Clarke closes her mouth and shakes her head. She takes another small step away from Abby but it feels like a mile of ocean has opened between them.

"I'm sorry. You don't have to answer," says Abby, peering over her shoulder at the two guards flanking her. "You can tell me later, if you want. Or not at all." It doesn't matter, just so long as Clarke and all that's left of Jake Griffin in this universe is here with her.

"I'm not staying," Clarke says. The words are forced, getting caught up in her throat and coming out all strangled and wrong.

Abby's stomach drops. The desperation worms its way up and out of its grave. "What?"

"This was a bad idea."

"Clarke."

"I can't."

Abby wants to scream. You can, you will, you have too. You're all I have left.

"Please," is what Abby says instead. She's still crying and doesn't think she will ever stop.

 Clarke shakes her head again. Abby isn't surprised.

"Then why did you come here?" Abby demands, drawing herself up to her fullest height. It helps nothing. Clarke gained an inch on her when she was about fifteen, maybe sixteen, and never let Abby hear the end of it. She looms now, tall enough to blot out the sun and leave Abby's world in chaos.

Clarke's hand flexes, the stumps wriggling back and forth, like Clarke can't make up her mind what she wants to do. Does she want to reach out and pull her mother to her again or does she want to turn and bolt back into the woods, towards whatever is waiting for her there. "I wanted to see," Clarke trails off. She can't look Abby in the eyes anymore. "Forget it."

"You need to come back," Abby says. "I need you here."

"You don't." She says it like an uncomfortable truth, almost as if Clarke didn't want to believe it until she was forced to confront the fact. Is that why she came back? To see if her people needed her as badly as she needed her people.

She must not like the answer. Clarke is starting to turn around, widening the chasm between them.

Something close to a sob catches in Abby's throat, rippling pain out along her jugular and down into her chest. She can feel the force of it break her heart open, tearing out stitches Abby had spent so long sewing in Clarke's absence.

"Clarke," Abby can't finish. Clarke, I'm afraid I'll never see you again. Clarke, I'm afraid you will lose yourself to the wild things out there. Clarke, I'm afraid you're already gone.

It doesn't matter, Clarke can hear her and nods. Yes, mother. Yes, to it all.

"I love you," Clarke says; a promise, a lie. "I'm sorry I came. Don't follow me."

Then —

Goodbye.

(Abby could never follow, no matter how hard she'd try.)

 

 


End file.
